The more I watch this episode the more I realize the untapped potential of this film. If this was made with even half the technology, half the dedication and half the budget of The Matrix it would have been a pretty damn good sci-fi flick.

So, Fingal gains control of the computer and uses it to disrupt global weather, seemingly for no reason but to mess with the Chairman. Dopey Computer Voice and Chairman Fat say that Fingal caused floods, heat waves, typhoons, blizzards.

Let's assume that in the sci-fi future of this movie, Earth's population has exploded and people live in dense mega-cities. (Since Fingal himself is supposedly from "BosNyWash," this is a good assumption.) So...how many people died as a result of him messing around like that? I would guess millions, at the absolute minimum. Probably closer to a billion people would have just straight-up died, not to mention the billions more who were wounded, inconvenienced, bankrupted, etc. So basically Fingal becomes the most devastating terrorist in world history just to try and get Chairman Fat to leave him alone.

I remember these WNET movies on PBS. Some of them were pretty good, many of them science fiction stories like this one. "The Lathe of Heaven" is one that stands out in my mind. It was probably the best one they did.

I remember someone on You Tube said that aging nun in the beginning looks like a Bajorian Security on Deep Space Nine. To me she looks like Odo's mother. XD
Trixie: "Funky...Odo is right behind you. He's the lamp."
What? Is this because I was doing business with Quark about holodeck programs is it?
Odo: "No I suspect that you work for the Tal Shiar. Now where's that hold out weapon on your person?"
I have no idea what you're talk..." A Romulan disrupter pistol falls out of my shirt pocket*
Odo: "Come with me, agent, and we can clear this up with your government."
I was set up by Trixie Tang here. She looks more Romulan than me. She is part Romulan!
Trixie: "Suckers."

There's actually kind of a lot to unpackage in this movie, if you give them a lot of credit and ignore stupid plot holes.

The doctor/technico who lost his brain (hooray for socks guy) has been lost in the HX361and I think is actually the other Fingal. He has no physical body (thus he mirrors Fingal's) and he is trying to help him escape. I see his little pervert buddy as a construct of his from Fingal's fantasy, just a program he has to make contact with the user.
HFS guy probably hates the Fat Man because he's probably dealt with these situations before and offed a couple of people lost in the HX361. That Gondol dude at the shareholders meeting warns the Fat man and mentions it is not "under normal circumstances" ie he's done it before.

The Fatman is using the HX361 to murder people in cyberspace and HFS guy caught on to it and was sent to do this risky operation (he was going to be cloned I think?) he was never supposed to survive. He never caught on that he was still alive because he is literally faceless in the HX361 to him (Fat man always calls him Rick and knows he's not Fingal at the end "we'll bluff him"). I think HFS guy thought Fingal had the best chance to break the cycle and sacrificed himself.
Thoughts?

Had I read a description of this film when PBS aired it, I probably would have sat down to watch it. A well known actor, futuristic, sci-fi theme; or maybe this is my segway into admitting I saw "Battlefield Earth" with John Travolta.....in the theater......a couple nights after it opened!

I freaking LOVE this movie... Not that I'm saying it's a good movie, oh gods no, but it's just so endearing how HARD they'er trying to tell a decent... or even coherent story, how desperately they want to set the story in a new and creative world, and how utterly, UTTERLY they fail at it. And for that it holds a special place in my heart.

Minor, minor trivia.....the opening theme to Public Pearl Television is the theme music for the Mystery Science Theater Hour, the trimmed down version of mst3k used by idiot tv stations who didn't want to set aside 2 hours for the syndicated episodes.

I want to like this episode so bad but the movie is such a piece of garbage. Coming from a huge fan of shitty sci-fi and awful dystopia movies, that says a lot. I love you, Raul Julia, but Jesus Christ.

This is one of the most bizarre episodes ever. The Casablanca flashes, futuristic comedic attempts and horrific script and casting make this film totally repulsive, which of course opens up the riffing opportunities for the gang to new heights. Classic funny!

I wish this movie could be remade with better talent behind the camera (and in front since the one good actor in this is gone) because really if the world was fleshed out more it would be a great movie, if they explained jack shit about the feuding corporations and how and why Jamila was giving secrets away to the competing corporation. There is so much wasted potential here, but I guess if the potential had been realized we'd have lost out on a great mst3k episode.

I usually enjoy MST3K in a small window in the corner of my screen while I work so sometimes I miss plot details. But I have seen this one with full attention and it is utter nonsense! Yet, still better than Inception :)

Okay so. I've seen this film a few times and I think I have a handle on what's going on. There are two like SUPER big companies in this world, Novicorp and Lexicorp. Fingal works for Novicorp, and when his body goes missing after his doppling, Lexicorp gets a hold of that information and releases it. Novicorp's stock nosedives really hard, so the Fat Man is forced to put resources into getting Fingal back/make sure he doesn't hack their Novicorp-y main frame stuff. That's about as far as I got before I just started screaming.

Okay, this is my third time watching this one. So I only have this one teensy weeny little question: JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE?! I can't figure out what the hell the movie is about! Great riffing, but really. Has anyone actually tried to follow the story?

knock Street Fighter II, but at least that movie was based on somethng RELEVANT, and Raul played M. Bison well....THIS catastrophic calamity would make Manos seem reasonably normal....wait...no, Mans still sucks the big one.

The narrator, one tool for exposition in this movie, doesn't understand the pseudoscientific exposition (around minute 30) so asks the computer for MORE EXPOSITION. It's like some "as you know Bob" infodumping gone wrong.

Okay they are clearly holding this telethon thing in the castle which they haven't got to yet, and the first part of the next episode has them coming out of the worm hole back to normal present time. So where and when did they hold this thing? Pocket dimension? Limbo? A back room on the Tardis?

Or was this a special episode deal like some of the thanksgiving ones? Normaly they do continuity better, and I know they were riffing on the fact PBS made the movie and all, but come on they had Ortega there crying out loud. To paraphrase Tom Servo "how'd they get off the cockadoodie Einstein-Rosen Bridge?"

The baboon sequence is actually re-used footage from a nature documentary film about Africa called "Animals Are Beautiful People", which I watched almost religiously as a kid. Can't believe they showed up again! hah. The guy who made that movie would go on to direct "The Gods Must Be Crazy."

When Apalonia (or whatever the hell her name is) is checking her list of dopples, it says that a woman is being doppled into a lion named "Bruno", a man is being doppled into a panda named "Flossy", and Fingal is being doppled into Daisy....Can you only be doppled into an animal of the opposite sex?

Nothing like getting home, pouring myself a nice, cool glass of reconst, grabbing a box of flavo-fibes, turning on my syntho-tron-vision console, pressing a few dozen buttons and scrolling up this cinema.

My favorite thing in this movie is Servo's impatience with all of the pseudo-science gibberish. Pointless abbreviations and sticking parts of words together to make a stupider word?! Yeah, THAT'S the future, sure! Oh wait...